CHAPTER I

A Child of Moods

...Scarcely formed or moulded— A rose with all its sweetest leaves yet folded. BYRON.

"I WISH you would not say such things, Betty!"

"What things?"

"You know. It only vexes mother; and what is the good of it?"

"What is the good of anything? I always say what I feel; I can't help myself!"

"Well, you ought not to feel like it. You are always so discontented. Other girls—"

"Oh, shut up, Molly! Don't quote 'other girls.' I hate them all. I hate everybody at this present moment. I'm sick of them; I'm sick of town; I'm—yes, I think I'm sick of life altogether!"

Betty had been poking the fire fiercely as she spoke; now she dashed down the poker and ran out of the room. Molly looked after her with a little sigh.

"Betty is so—so uneven," she said to herself. "She is always getting upset over nothing at all. She'll be back in a minute full of remorse and repentance. It would wear me out to live as she does!"

Her fair head bent over some manuscript paper on the table before her. A dreamy look took possession of her deep blue eyes.

"Now, where was I when she interrupted me? Poor Elfrida! I must make her see Roderick once again before he dies; she must have the comfort of a last farewell!"

But Molly was not to be left in peace to the woes of her heroine. A maid came into the room.

"Mrs. Stuart would like to see you, miss."

Molly rose at once.

"All right, Margaret. Has the doctor been?"

"He has just gone, miss."

Molly left the room, and made her way upstairs to her mother's bedroom.

Mrs. Stuart lay on a couch by the fire. A square table covered with papers was drawn up by her side. She was a very beautiful woman still, though threads of silver ran through her wavy brown hair, and many fine wrinkles and lines were discernible round her dark expressive eyes. She looked at her eldest daughter a little keenly.

Molly was always a fair sight to look upon—a sweet, fresh English maiden, with a sunny golden head and irreproachable features, and soft red lips that looked as if only smiles could come from them. Molly was blest with a happy, sunshiny disposition. She took life easily, and her cares and sorrows at present were bound up in the life of the heroine of her imagination. She was young enough and gay enough to like to revel in imaginary misery. She was devoted to her mother, and now bent down lovingly, and kissed her forehead.

Only Molly dared to be demonstrative with Mrs. Stuart; she was not one who liked or encouraged tokens of affection from her children.

"Are you better, mother?"

"I suppose so. I must be, after this long period of rest and convalescence. Just look at my batch of correspondence! I have been unable to touch it yet, and Dr. Forsyth actually forbade me to write a line to-day. You must give me an hour, and answer all those that are important. Where is Betty? I want her too, for I must speak to you both. Dr. Forsyth wants me to leave town at once."

Molly looked surprised.

"I will fetch Betty," she said; and, leaving her mother's room quietly, she sped up another flight of stairs, and knocked at her sister's door.

It was locked. Betty herself was standing by her window, looking down with wistful restless eyes into the dreary rain-sodden London square below her. Her heart was hot within her. Betty could not take life so easily as Molly did. It did not satisfy her; it was continually disappointing her. She looked for such great things; she had such a capacity for enjoyment; and yet the very gold seemed to turn to dust when she touched it.

Her life was in the same groove as Molly's, they shared their pleasures and friends together; yet what seemed natural and pleasant to the one, worried and irritated the other.

It was as Molly said, "over nothing at all" that Betty vexed her soul.

For three years the young girls had been enjoying London Society under their mother's wing. Their father had died when they were still in the schoolroom. They had never seen much of him, as his whole life was absorbed in politics; and it was only after their education was finished, and they had been presented at court, that mother and daughters drew nearer together. Mrs. Stuart saw that it was her duty to accompany her daughters to entertainments which otherwise would have been distasteful to her. She was herself more interested in literary clubs and soirées than in ballrooms; and philanthropic objects appealed to her more than garden-parties, regattas, and the various amusements that her daughters were supposed to require.

She conscientiously tried to attempt both lines of living. She took the girls abroad, accompanied them to Scotland every autumn, and gave them the orthodox season in town every year. In addition she followed her own pursuits with untiring and unflagging energy. A member and, in some instances, secretary of many important and influential committees, a patroness of hospitals, clubs, and other charitable institutions, Mrs. Stuart wore herself out with writing, interviewing, and visiting; and at length nature asserted its sway, and a serious breakdown in health occurred. For two months she had been unable to leave her bed, and now, on this rainy day in March, she was for the first time feeling well enough to discuss future plans with her daughters.

When Betty broke away from her sister, the girls had been discussing together a conversation held with their mother the night before. An invitation had arrived for them from an old friend of their mother's—a woman with a large family of young people. She wished them to join her house-party in an old château in Brittany, and Mrs. Stuart was willing that they should go. Molly acquiesced. Neither she nor Betty cared much for the girls, who were, as they expressed it, "silly, empty-headed creatures"; but she would not have thought of rebelling so furiously against the visit as Betty did.

"Why should we go?" she had said. "Why should we pretend to enjoy their hospitality when all the time we despise them in our hearts? Their talk makes me ashamed of being a girl, and their brothers imagine every other girl is like them! Mrs. Railley is always telling me how Reggie dotes on Molly; how much in love he is with her! Molly scorns him, and yet smiles at his mother's talk as if she liked it. I hate hypocrisy! I hate pretence! And a visit to the Railleys always makes me sick of everybody and everything. No one is real there. It is all artificiality and affectation!"

Mrs. Stuart had listened to this very quietly; then she said,—

"You can please yourselves. There is no occasion for such vehemence, Betty. If you feel yourself on such a superior level to the Railleys, you had better decline the invitation, and wait for another that satisfies your requirements. But I think it is better taste to conceal such thoughts about an old friend of mine, who has always been most kind and considerate towards you. Leave me now, for I do not feel able to discuss the matter further with you."

Betty had dropped the subject then, but she renewed it the next morning, when she and Molly were together in their own sitting-room.

"It is this continual talk of marriage that sickens me so, Molly. The Railleys can think and talk of nothing else. Mrs. Railley thinks it quite dreadful that neither you nor I are engaged yet. It makes me long to get away from men altogether. I feel I want to be free, and fill my mind with other things. The world is so big, so full, it could be so different to what all these town people make it!"

"I think," said Molly slowly, "you sound conceited. Why should you judge every one so hardly?"

Betty did not answer for a moment. Molly never could enter into all her thoughts. She viewed life so differently; she was so placidly content with all that came in her way that it was impossible to ruffle her. But Betty tried hard to defend herself from the charge of conceit, and in the end, as we have seen, she judged retirement the wisest course to pursue. Now, unlocking her door, she presented two flushed cheeks, bright eyes, and an untidy head of hair.

"Does mother want me? I'll come at once. Molly dear, I didn't mean to be cross."

Mrs. Stuart looked at her as she entered the room, much in the same way as she had looked at Molly, but there was not the same satisfaction in her eyes.

Betty was not considered a beauty. Many found her interesting, but she owed her chief charm to her expression, and that varied from moment to moment in a bewildering and thoroughly inexplicable fashion. She was tall and graceful, her quick, impulsive movements were never awkward; her little curly head and dark speaking eyes were nearly always in motion; but many wondered at the wistful curves of her sensitive lips, the sadness that seemed to peep out so unexpectedly from under her long curled eyelashes.

"An untamed soul," her mother would say, shone out of its environment.

Would fashion, love, or religion tame it?

Betty was an interesting study to her mother,—little more.

"Did you want me, mother?" she asked; and Betty was too full of her own thoughts to enquire how the invalid was. Mrs. Stuart noticed the omission.

"Yes, I want you. Sit down. Dr. Forsyth wishes me to leave town at once."

"And go abroad?" asked Molly.

"No; he wants me to have perfect quiet and seclusion; to vegetate, in fact, if I can manage to do it. And he suggests a country farmhouse out of the beaten track. I think I must let him have his way, but where to go I know not. And then I am wondering about you girls: whether to take you with me, or leave you with your Aunt Dora."

"Aunt Dora is not going to be in town this season," said Molly quickly. "She is going to Switzerland. I met her out yesterday, and she told me so."

"Of course," said Mrs. Stuart, "if you go to Mrs. Railley, she would be delighted to keep you for a couple of months; but Dr. Forsyth wants me to try six months of quiet."

"Oh, mother, let us go into the country with you!" said Betty eagerly. "It will be delicious to get away from everybody for a time."

"Of course we must go with you," said Molly more quietly. "We could not think of letting you go alone."

"I shall put my veto against a farmhouse," said Mrs. Stuart; "I could find a small furnished house, I suppose—perhaps a vicarage. Farmhouses are generally uncomfortable except in the height of summer, when one is able to spend all one's time out of doors."

"Do you remember, Molly," said Betty, turning eagerly to her sister, "that delightful farm we went to when we were quite small? Did it not belong to some of nurse's relations?"

"You mean where the Fairfaxes used to live? Of course I remember it; but mother doesn't wish for a farmhouse."

"Perhaps the Fairfaxes' house may be to let," said Betty. "Mrs. Fairfax was trying to let it before she went abroad with Grace."

"You might ask Turnbull," said Mrs. Stuart musingly; "she always corresponds with nurse. I do not mind where we go, so long as we are comfortable."

Molly left the room to make enquiries of their housekeeper, who had been with them for many years. Betty got up from her seat and began to pace the room restlessly. Then she turned and confronted her mother.

"Mother, need I go with Molly to Mrs. Thorn's 'At Home,' this afternoon?"

"Why should you not? I forget who is going to take you. Mrs. Sinclair, is she not?"

"Yes; but I shall not be missed. We have been to so many lately. I am tired of them."

"Is that your only reason?"

A rich colour dyed Betty's cheeks, making her look very handsome.

"Hugh Sinclair is going," she said, with downcast eyes; "and he bothers so."

There was silence. Mrs. Stuart's eyebrows contracted slightly.

"Some months ago you and Hugh were inseparable. Have you quarrelled?"

"Not exactly."

Betty's tone was hesitating. She always found it difficult to talk freely to her mother.

"If you cannot confide in me, I cannot help you," said Mrs. Stuart, a little stiffly.

"I did like Hugh as a—a friend," stammered Betty; "but I don't want him as a husband, and—and he won't take 'No' from me."

"When did he speak to you definitely?"

"Just when you were first taken ill. He says I don't know my own mind, and that he will wait till I change it."

"Do you know your own mind?" asked Mrs. Stuart. "Hugh must notice, as we all do, how many moods you have. Your 'friendship'—as you express it—with him, has been very marked. I do not wonder at his mistaking your feelings towards him."

Betty felt her mother's censure keenly. Then she threw up her head with a little defiance.

"It is very hard that I cannot enjoy being with one of Douglas's old schoolfellows whom I have known since he was a boy, without people talking. That is why I shall be thankful to get into the country."

"May I ask why Hugh is objectionable to you? He is a steady young fellow, with good prospects."

Betty hesitated again.

"He isn't my idea of a man," she said confusedly. "He won't think deeply on any subject; he laughs at everything, and only goes with the stream."

"You require a genius to content you," said Mrs. Stuart, with a smile that was tinged with sarcasm. "Women who go through life with ideals are seldom satisfied. They are like the dog who snapped at the shadow, and lost his bone."

"I think I could live without a bone," said Betty hotly.

"We will not discuss it any more. If you are quite certain of your own mind, stay at home this afternoon, and be more careful in future in your behaviour toward young men."

Betty slipped out of the room with burning cheeks and tearful eyes.

"I wish I could be coldly pleasant like Molly," she said to herself. "I talk too fast, and laugh too much, and then I am sorry afterwards. I shall be thankful to be away from Hugh, and everybody else. I know mother is displeased with me. I think she would like me married and done for. I never seem to please her. But I won't—oh, I won't be married to a man without a soul!"

She went into the library and seated herself at a small organ there. It had been a birthday gift to her from her great friend Nesta St. Clair, who was now in India with her husband. If there was one thing of which Betty was passionately fond, it was music. It soothed and satisfied her as nothing else did; and as Mrs. Stuart listened to the distant strains of passionate melody, now flooding the library, she gave a little sigh, saying,—

"I wish she were settled in a home of her own."